How to Play the Blues Scale on Country Guitar

Learn how to play the blues scale on country guitar from musician Boo Reiners in this Howcast video.

Transcript

Let's take a look at the blues pentatonic scale and how it fits into country music. You might have heard it in some of the old mountain ballads. You might have heard it in some bluesy Hank Williams style songs. Again, it's that five note scale, so if we were in the key of G we could sound it out like this. Playing basically a G scale with an F-natural in it instead of the F-sharp and we're going to leave out that major third as well.

So it would be a minor scale, pentatonic scale, but generally placed onto a song that's got major chords in it. So G major chord, so that sound would be underneath that minor pentatonic sound like this. So it's a cool flavor. It's got a little bit of the sugar and a little bit of the salt in there. And you can, of course, throw in some other notes as little approach notes, passing tones, on your way to the basic five note pentatonic scale tones.

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So something like this would work really well. So I threw in a few extra notes in there but the basic structure of the scale is again that five note scale. If you were in the key of E, again you've got an E major chord but you use that E minor pentatonic scale on top of it and it's got a lot of flavor.

So blues is in a lot of country music. You wouldn't have country music without the blues. So that's a little demonstration of how you can use your minor pentatonic blues scale in country guitar.